Monday, September 17, 2012

Baklava

This weekend, my boyfriend decided to bake something, and he chose baklava, a traditional Greek/Turkish/middle eastern desert. So far, I've tasted baklava only in kebab places, and I thought that they tasted OK, but their sweetness is a little bit overwhelming. Now, it changed completely.

In baklava walnut and honey are the most dominating savours, with some lemon in the background. He also used raisins, which was a very good choice. From this baklava, I could eat three pieces at a time without feeling completely stuffed.

Ingredients:

1 pack of phyllo dough: you will need 16 very thin layers of pastry, about 20x40 cm (about8x16 inches) in size

300 g (10.5 oz) ground walnuts

100 g (3.5 oz)butter

100 g (3.5 oz) raisins

juice of 0.5 lemon, strained

100 g (3.5 oz) honey

100 g (3.5 oz) sugar

300 ml (10 fl oz) water

Instructions:

Melt the butter in a pan. Put one layer of the dough in an oven tray (that should be the same size as the dough), and brush with the butter. Put another one on it and brush again. Three such layers will give the base of the baklava. Mix together the ground walnuts and the raisins, and sprinkle the dough with the mixture. Then comes another two layers of buttered dough. Continue in such manner until you have six layers of walnut. Finish with three layers of buttered dough on the top. Preheat the oven to 180°C (356°F), and bake the baklava for 40 minutes, then take out end let it cool.
Now, to make the syrup, mix together in a pan the honey, the sugar, the water and the lemon juice and boil them together until thickened. Pour over the baklava, and wait until it cools down.